"Which brings us to the question of the two paths for fiction. If Wallace's, at the end, was written with an awareness of a world teeming with information and distraction that made connection unprecedentedly hard, his fiction expressed a way for the individual to connect in that world nonetheless: fighting through the information for a place of understanding. [...] But if fiction is to continue to exert an influence over a culture that finds it ever easier to connect, however frailly, to the world around them through technology, Saunders's stories suggest that the ambition to connect outwardly isn't the only path we can choose. Rather, his fiction shows us that the path to reconciliation with our condition is inward, a journey we must make alone."